ODS9EG: Let He Who Is Without Sin

[Sonnenburg]

Two part review that looks at how much I hate this episode that sullied the good name of DS9. Worf and Dax go to Risa to allegedly solve their relationship problems at the expense of the viewer.

Video

[Thanas]

I have to say, that was your best intro yet..."Love hurts".

[tim31]

Agreed

"And like everyone else, I hate him too."

I don't agree with every Chuck Review(even if I appreciate the candor. But I didn't like this one for all the same reasons listed in the video. And the metaphor of turning off the weather control systems to 'rain on their parade' is just hack.

[Steve]

Haven't really started it yet, but the montage with "Love Hurts" was like a rolling train of hilarity until you got to that last bit from TNG, which has about killed me.

[Steve]

Still early in, two questions/comments:

What was the third Risa story past LHWIWS and Captain's Holiday?

And IIRC jama'haron or whatever was just Risan for sex, and Trek does sometimes slip alien words in. When they're not using them as adjectives. <Suchandsuch> bird, <suchandsuch> drink, etc. (Example I just remembered: Denebian slime devil.) That's an ongoing sci-fi cliche that usually irritates me these days. Though your point of them tip-toeing around it remains. Which also reminds me of that lesbian kiss Jadzia had in Season 4 and the built-in excuse of "it's because of the symbiotes!".

Edit: Okay, that's what I get for pausing mid-review and remarking. "You don't need to trot out your made up word whenever you mean 'fuck'." D'OH.

[Ghost Rider]

1. I love your bit of hatred. Really, it's a perfect with the added touch of Quark with boobs.

2. Love Hurts is perfection in the scenes shown.

And oh jesus christ on a pogo stick...thank you. The bit of the violence and sex was perfect and yes, I know of it, but it's truly good to see someone else see it. Especially with Fallout 3. And the made up words...well that is something I believe has irked me for so long, after a while I am amazed when a show/game goes fuck or shit.

I await part two of the review. Really, the Risa stories are shit, and I am glad to watch and listen to this whole shit pile.

[Ghost Rider]

I await part two of the review. Really, the Risa stories are shit, and I am glad to watch and listen to this whole shit pile.

It is already up on Chuck's site, embedded on the page right under part 1.

Ah found it, and made me realize how really bad this episode is. Seriously this is just complete shit. Not the worst of all of them, but certainly the easy contender for the top spot. In fact the only reason I can believe the Quark cross dressing is worse because instead of half naked attractive women, we get a fucking ugly Quark nearly getting fucked and slobbered over.

[tim31]

Okay, found a point I disagree with: Rom. Yeah, he's ugly. But I found the character to be endearing and honest. He risked his life for the resistance, has been fucked over more times than the middle east, and yes, those attributes can easily be applied to a stupid person, but all the same...

Question for Mr Chuck, which I may not get an answer to: how do you find the character of Ezri Dax in comparison to Jadzia? Or is that an issue for another video?

[Glom]

Do 'Duet' next week. It would make a nice contrast against this one.

[Patrick Degan]

Ah, Chuck was in rare form even for him on this one. And yes, the only happy ending to this abomination is if a Death Star shows up in the Risa system.

I'd forgotten this episode and how it made me squirm watching it at the time. I think that this one really helped to put me off DS9 altogether.

"Let He Who Is Without Sin" (have the privilege of stoning the writers to death) encapsulates in one embarrassing package TNG-era Trek's whole juvenile mindset towards sex. This had been an endemic problem in the spinoffs since TNG's first season: a basic inability to actually show a mature relationship between grown adults or to even show basic maturity about relationships between adults. Even in the one TOS episode ("Bread And Circuses") in which Captain Kirk literally has a love-slave thrown at him on the Roman Empire planet as a pre-execution going away present, there's more actual human warmth and genuine affection between Kirk and Drusilla, a pair of grownups, in five minutes of screen time than anything we see in seven years of TNG, seven years of DS9, and the combined decade of hell that was V'ger and Boobyprize. I hate TNG-era Trek's entire high school cocktease treatement of sexuality: written of, by, and for maladjusted morons who've never actually gotten any.

And then there's the C-plot with the New Essentialists and Worf, for however briefly, throwing in with them. Worf and Jadzia should have been trying to work out their relationship problems during adjournments of Worf's court-martial for treason. Because he's guilty. Doesn't matter if he might have had some parallel feelings with Monte Markham's soapbox philosophy: he was supposed to remember that he was first and foremost a Starfleet officer and protector of Federation citizens and arrest the douchebag on the spot as a criminal when he pulled his hostage-taking bit of street theatre, not aid and abet their acts of terrorism and sabotage to help put the Fear of God into the vacationers.

Fuck this whole episode.

Oh, and I could have gone the rest of my life without ever seeing an image of sex-change Quark. I had actually bailed out on the show before that had aired and now I'll have to have my brain taken out and scrubbed.

[Big Orange]

The problem of presenting sex (and also bad language) in TNG era Trek is reflected in American TV in general that is not cable - on CBS the censors allow the network to show graphic depictions of people getting shot, stabbed, burned, electrocuted, dismembered, and decapitated on crime shows such as CSI and NCIS, with the R2 DVDs for these shows often getting 15 or even occasionally 18 ratings. But quite glaringly the sexual content is no more suggestive than on a PG/12 rated Bond movie, while the characters never say "shit", "fuck", or "cunt", only comparatively mild curse words like "bitch", "bastard", or "jerk".

[Samuel]

Great, now I have the image of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore sumo wrestling.

[Gil Hamilton]

Okay, found a point I disagree with: Rom. Yeah, he's ugly. But I found the character to be endearing and honest. He risked his life for the resistance, has been fucked over more times than the middle east, and yes, those attributes can easily be applied to a stupid person, but all the same...

Rom was shy, socially retarded, dull as a post, and has had any spirit in him squished out by an overbearing older sibling but good at being a mechanic. Chuck's point was valid though, Leda's leaving Bashir, a brave, super-intelligent, ubermensch medical doctor for a mutt like Rom comes across like nerd fanservice. I can count the number of times on no hands that THAT has happened, except in the fantasies of certain people who've crushed on the pretty girl and went "If ONLY she'd see I'm a really nice guy, despite me being immensely unattractive! Then she'd leave her handsome, successful boyfriend for me!".

[Steve]

Maybe Leeta left Bashir because Marina and various slash writers are right, and she was tired of him pining away for Miles and/or Garak....

[Covenant]

I think the DS9 episodes and plotlines were on average better than any of the new incarnations of Trek, but this one is completely inforgivable, and seems to take a good show and highlight nearly every awful and aggrivating element of it. Worst of all, it's dull, since even an awful, terrible episode can be memorable or have some interesting elements in it. I personally would rate this, and the few like it, lower than Profit and Lace though, and the reason for that is that not only was the episode terrible and awful to watch, but front to back it was a terrible and awful production, which has no excuse or saving grace. From memory alpha:

The story for this episode originated in a discussion about Eugene O'Neill's 1947 play A Moon for the Misbegotten, a story of the destructiveness of alcohol and sexuality. According to Ira Steven Behr, "the idea was to do a show that would rattle the audience, that would show sexuality and push the envelope about Risa. Once you get past the titillation, is this a lifestyle that people in the 20th century can approve of? It was supposed to be a show that looked at 24th century morals and sexuality. We pretty much failed on both counts."

In the eyes of Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Ira Steven Behr, the main reason the episode failed was because of restrictions placed upon how open they could be about sexuality. This was a show that was supposed to be examining sex, but it wasn't allowed to actually show any sex. As Wolfe explains, "kids watch this show, and in some markets it airs at five o'clock. That meant we couldn't show skin, so there was no sex. It became a totally asexual show, and once that happened the whole thing got flushed down the toilet because none of it made sense anymore."

The writers here are just showing their own juvenile incompetance, and that's staggering. So what we saw here was the literary vomit of what happens when hack writers try to write about the menace of overindulgence, none of which came through, instead of just being a campy romp on Risa with a subtext about trust that it looked like. The entire episode was a failure, in every sense. The acting was poor, the production was poor, but the episode itself was a flop beyond words. If you want to make a show about sex in Star Trek, you can make a show about sex in Star Trek, you don't need skin to infer sex. You could show me Dax naked and it still wouldn't be relevent to a look at morals and sexuality. The idea of using pleasure to escape yourself was never explored, and not through a lack of skin.

The worst thing is Colm Meany, aka Chief O'Brien, played a key role in a well-reviewed stage production of A Moon for the Misbegotten alongside Kevin Spacy, and his demeanor and acting presence could have been a great benefit to this episode, not to mention he's the only character who has ever had a stable relationship in Star Trek.

The reason I would rate Profit and Lace higher than this is the fact that the episode was potentially much, much worse, and was saved by a combination of actors involved. This warrants a bump slightly, especially since no matter how eyeball-searingly awful the images are, that alone doesn't change the fact that Profit and Lace had started off harmless but offensive, and ended up as awful but with a somewhat better core message than anything to be found in Let He Who Is Without Sin:

Echevarria's idea was seized upon by Ira Steven Behr, although he knew that the proposed episode carried risks; "The idea was to do a character comedy. We wanted to take this misogynist character and make him into a woman. But it's very difficult, for a lot or reasons, to get people on board with stuff like this, and when they do get on board they tend to go too far, or too broad, or they lose the reality, or they're not comfortable with it. And if any of those things are true, it won't work."

Armin Shimerman reportedly hated the script for this episode, as he felt Quark did not learn anything from his experience as a woman. Indeed, the original script had Lumba crying a great deal, but Shimerman refused to play it that way as he felt is was a negative stereotype against women. Of the episode's director Siddig he says, "He wanted to make it less of a comedy and more of an exploration of the relationship between a bickering mother and son. He tried to push the envelop and take Quark into an area that Quark isn't used to going in. I applaud him for it, although we reshot some of the scenes, like the heart attack, because he had a much darker vision than the writers had imagined."

So as bad as Profit and Lace is, there was a little development, it went a little somewhere, and it had a little fragment of something that was redeemable. If it had been shot as intended it would have been a high farce with a possibility of being hugely offensive to women. There's no point-earning catagory for "Most Improved," but I certainly think it's worth noting that Profit and Lace was given new redeeming features during shooting, while Let He Who Is Without Sin managed to bungle up a single storyline of a play that was already written which they already had actors more than capable of doing.

The only change to the plot needed would have been having Dax's old companion be, not a beautiful and superficial Risian ditz, but a Risian wracked with some variety of issues--which is needed for any discussion about overindulgence is corruptive. This would allow us to see Dax perhaps lapse into a period of similar excess, and open a discussion about her flippant, nymph-like behavior being a cover for lifetimes of love, loss, and the weight of it driving her to alcoholic-like suppression. Worf could grow a bit and see his wall around emotions is unlike either his Human or his Klingon heritage, and that it's been built up Pink Floyd fashion as a defense of his own. And Risa could look a bit more like Vegas. Bringing Quark along could have actually been a great asset, if it had lead to a demonstration that in Paradise, gambling and the illicit substance trade is still popular. Funny how Risa seems to be nothing but beaches and sex, without any other form of entertainment to be found.

[Thanas]

The writers here are just showing their own juvenile incompetance, and that's staggering. So what we saw here was the literary vomit of what happens when hack writers try to write about the menace of overindulgence, none of which came through, instead of just being a campy romp on Risa with a subtext about trust that it looked like.

Oh, c'mon, Robert Hewitt Wolfe is far from being a hack writer.

[Covenant]

The writers here are just showing their own juvenile incompetance, and that's staggering. So what we saw here was the literary vomit of what happens when hack writers try to write about the menace of overindulgence, none of which came through, instead of just being a campy romp on Risa with a subtext about trust that it looked like.

Oh, c'mon, Robert Hewitt Wolfe is far from being a hack writer.

I'm not sure what else he's written, but this is really awful conceptualization, so he at least put on the appearence of a hack writer for the duration. How can a writer attempt to write a story and never even get anywhere near close? I don't think the stage play needed to show a lot of skin to get the point across, so he has less of an excuse to explore similar theme on cable, kids or no kids.

[Thanas]

I'm not sure what else he's written, but this is really awful conceptualization, so he at least put on the appearence of a hack writer for the duration. How can a writer attempt to write a story and never even get anywhere near close? I don't think the stage play needed to show a lot of skin to get the point across, so he has less of an excuse to explore similar theme on cable, kids or no kids.

It sounds more like he wanted to do different things but the production team or the suits overruled him.

Really, RHW is no hack. Remember Andromeda? He is the guy that got booted off the show he invented because he refused to make the changes Sorbo wanted.

[Covenant]

Really, RHW is no hack. Remember Andromeda?

I never watched Andromeda, that's probably why I've got no perspective on his stuff.

[Big Orange]

This episode review also reminds how somewhat flat and insinsere an actress Terry Farrel could be (although she's not show destroying terrible and to be fair she was overshadowed by a pretty strong ensemble).

[Gil Hamilton]

It sounds more like he wanted to do different things but the production team or the suits overruled him.

Really, RHW is no hack. Remember Andromeda? He is the guy that got booted off the show he invented because he refused to make the changes Sorbo wanted.

Pointing out Andromeda isn't exactly winning him "not a hack" points, you know.

[Thanas]

It sounds more like he wanted to do different things but the production team or the suits overruled him.

Really, RHW is no hack. Remember Andromeda? He is the guy that got booted off the show he invented because he refused to make the changes Sorbo wanted.

Pointing out Andromeda isn't exactly winning him "not a hack" points, you know.

It does if you know what happened and if you've watched the first 1.5 seasons of Andromeda.

[Gil Hamilton]

It does if you know what happened and if you've watched the first 1.5 seasons of Andromeda.

Are you kidding me? Andromeda was terrible from the get go.

[Thanas]

It does if you know what happened and if you've watched the first 1.5 seasons of Andromeda.

Are you kidding me? Andromeda was terrible from the get go.

Really? Guess we disagree then.

[Big Orange]

I thought Andromeda was never great, but it seemed fairly watchable and competent when Wolf was in charge, and from what relatively little I saw of it I kinda liked characters such as Tyr Anasazi and that alien who resembled a bipedal bat. But of course Sorbo's ego went critical he booted Wolf and the show went down the toilet in earnest and I saw one post-Wolf episode on ITV 4 (or something) and it was vapid shit comparable to Smallville, post-S1 Heroes, or S1 Robin Hood.